Just so this doesn’t sit un-carved into the physical wall of local history, last Saturday’s Corb Lund/Ian Tyson concert at the stately Northern Jubilee Auditorium was more than a little legendary.

“Old age sucks,” 84-year-old Tyson noted about the creaks in his joints and needing Lund to remind him in what key to play certain songs. And, yes, as Tyson says himself, his voice has suffered considerably over the years — but he’s done a pretty remarkable job of circling around his new reality, including having Lund harmonizing or outright carrying certain lines in some of those iconic numbers.

Now with all that disclosed, when Lund performed Bucking Horse Rider — which Tyson himself requested in front of the sold-out crowd of about 2,500 — the elder singer’s vocal accompaniment made it maybe the best live version of the song I’ve ever heard. And the charm and charisma of the two western fetishists together on that stage underlined the boldness of their dual and ongoing cultural impact on Alberta and well beyond the provincial ranch fences.

Opening with This Is My Prairie, 48-year-old Lund was hilariously meta all night, talking about the career he’s corralled on the borders of country radio which, because he’s not trying to massage the candy-floss hot country centre, “lets me write about pretty much anything I want.” Prairie, let’s recall, is about a guy planning to use a shotgun in his negotiations with the oil company hoping to push a pipeline through his land.

Flipping through the Rolodex of terms used to describe his tunes, Lund recently settled on AgTraj — Agricultural Tragedy — the greatest moment of which to him seems to be having to play Truck Got Stuck, which he claimed he must now perform every night for the rest of his life due to a deal with the devil he made on an Edmonton street corner in the snowy darkness some years ago.

“Your time’s coming, kid,” Tyson joked after making his old-age prognosis, later dropping an f-bomb as he noted all 17 people in Longview must’ve been in attendance to react so strongly to a mention of the town. That moment was a turning point during the show, as were the stories surrounding the songs, including Lund explaining how cattle have an unfortunate propensity to choke on sugar beets and Tyson describing the bandanas tied to a fence surrounding Texas rancher Charlie Goodnight’s grave.

Hearing Navajo Rug and MC Horses again reminded me how many times I’ve seen Tyson play, and of course Edmonton’s municipal anthem Four Strong Winds closed out the night as a total singalong.

Big thanks to both these gents for their contributions.

Eric Bibb, on Stony Plain Records, is up for a Grammy against the Stones.supplied

Backstage at the Jube, Saturday Night Blues host and Stony Plains Records president Holger Petersen was giddy about the fact one of his artists, Eric Bibb, is up for a Grammy Jan. 28, against no less than the Rolling Stones.

Over the phone after the 21st annual Maple Blues Awards in Toronto Tuesday, Petersen explained, “Stony Plain was up for several awards: MonkeyJunk; Kenny ‘Blues Boss’ Wayne; Colin Linden was up for producer of the year.

Petersen is heading to the Grammys, of course, and explains of Bibb’s nom, “It’s for a record he did called Migration Blues. It looks at migration from contemporary places like Syria and other struggles around the world, and also goes back to migration in the 1850s-1970s, when a lot of African-Americans were leaving Mississippi and the Southern states. And of course the famous migrations that led to Chicago, Detroit, places like that where it changed the culture.

“Historically it’s been a universal problem, and I think it’s really great Eric Bibb tied it all up together. He’s very much a humanitarian.”

Stony Plain has been up for Grammys six times. Nominated in the Best Traditional Blues Album category, Petersen just laughs when I ask how he’ll feel if the album beats out Mick and the London boys, but fingers crossed.

David Byrne is coming to the Jubilee May 20.supplied

And in case you missed this news, the sylish and brilliant David Byrne is coming to the Jube May 20. Besides a terrific, 11-album solo career which includes all sorts of collaborations with Arcade Fire and St. Vincent, Byrne founded world music record label Luaka Bop in 1990, which proliferated Latin American, African and Cuban music into a deeper mainstream.

But it’s his role as lead singer of Talking Heads that introduced him to the collective consciousness, especially at the band’s most visible peak in Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense — the stage being built in real-time around the performers, considered by many to be the best concert film of all time (as a huge fan of the band, I’d argue that).

Not satisfied with their art-school, nerd-punk origins found in songs like Psycho Killer and Animals, the four-piece band took on multiple personalities, including pop, country, a Parisian vibe near the end and most notably funk — when they hired Parliament-Funkadelic keyboard player Bernie Worrell, guitarist Alex Weir and others on tour. The band’s bass player Tina Weymouth is an icon of uncool cool.

Talking Heads’ bigger hits include Once in a Lifetime, Burning Down the House, Road to Nowhere and the hypnotically comfortable This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody), which was the total antithesis of their earlier growl.

Byrne’s also the author of a number of spectacular books including The New Sins, Bicycle Diaries and How Music Works, as well as being a notable sound artist who has converted buildings into playable instruments. Can you tell I’m excited?

At $71, tickets go on sale 10 a.m. Friday through ticketmaster.ca — most definitely see you there.

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